The Spirit of the Republican Party

The Spirit of the Republican Party: A Study in Demonic Power

Institutions have spirits every bit as much as individual humans do. They have at their core an invisible spiritual nature that both controls and expresses their innate character. St. Paul knew that truth well. He spoke of the spirit of institutions using words like “the powers.” See, for example, Romans 8:38-39. For a brilliant modern examination of the spirits that rule the earth and its institutions see Walter Wink’s three volumes Naming the Powers, Unmasking the Powers, and Engaging the Powers.¹ An institution’s spirit, that is, its “power” in Paul’s and Wink’s sense of the word, not only governs the institution, it endures over time. That’s why an institution tends to continue to function as it has before or changes the way it functions only very slowly even when the people who make up the institution change. It’s why institutions often do things collectively that the people who make them up would never do individually. Wink gives us an important mantra about the powers, about the spirit of institutions. It goes: The powers are created good, the powers are fallen, the powers can be redeemed. All of us who work in the church, I think, have experienced how hard it is to introduce change into a church. Introducing change in a church or other institution is hard because the institution has its own power. It has its spirit, invisible but powerful, that works always to maintain the institution’s status quo. Institutions resist change because the spirit or power of institutions resist change. Their resistance to change is an expression of the fallen nature of their power.

Because they are creatures every bit as much as human beings are, the spirit of an institution is at least fallible. That’s what Wink means when he says the institutions are fallen. They are apt to function in ways other than the way God created them to function. To the extent that they do that we can say that they are demonic. Demonic here means that a power is functioning in a distorted, fallen, or even evil way. We often think that demonic means possessed by a demon. The certainly is what the concept means in the Bible. Possessed by a demon is a proper way to think of a power being demonic as long as we understand that “possessed by a demon” is a metaphor, not something to be taken literally. For example, large corporations often do things that are harmful to the people who work in them. Say a corporation is laying off a large number of employees and moving its operations to Mexico or China because labor is so much cheaper in Mexico or China than it is in the US. We decry the harmful effect of the corporation’s decision on its employees, their families, and the places where they live and work. The corporation’s response is likely to be “It’s just business.” Yes, it is business; but more significantly it is a corporation operating according to its demonic spirit. It is acting in a way that is harmful to people. The CEO of the corporation would never intentionally harm an employee in his or her personal interactions with the employee, but the corporation harms a great many employees and others who depend on them with no qualms of conscience. That’s because the corporation is operating according to its spirit, its power, and its spirit is demonic, fallen.

Like any other institution the Republican Party of the United States has its spirit, its power, and the spirit of the Republican Party today is almost entirely demonic. The demonic nature of the party’s spirit is seen in the destructive things for which it stands, which it advocates, and which it tries to enshrine in federal law. Here are just a few of the demonic things that the spirit of the Republican Party and/or some of its prominent representatives stand for:

1. Taking health insurance away from millions of Americans.
2. Giving tax breaks to wealthy individuals and corporations and cutting benefits to ordinary people to to it.
3. Destroying the environment by repealing or refusing to enforce environmental regulations and essentially destroying the Environmental Protection Agency.
4. Increasing spending on the military, already by far the most powerful military in the world.
5. Refusing entry into the country to refugees, would-be immigrants, temporary workers, people seeking medical treatment, and students from Muslim countries on the specious claim that they are a security threat.
6. Demeaning the Muslim faith as inherently violent.
7. Building an immensely expensive and utterly ineffective wall along the Mexican border to keep out people who actually are a vital part of our economy.
8. Destroying the American system of public education by advocating so-called charter schools that have the effect of diverting funds from schools for underprivileged areas and maintaining white privilege.
9. Demeaning and discriminating against people on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.
10. Turning federally protected land, including national monuments, over to rapacious private developers.
11. Nominating the American fascist Donald Trump as the party’s candidate for President.
12. Creating a culture in which truth is simply irrelevant.

This list could I suppose go on and on, but I trust the point is made. All of these positions of the Republican Party are harmful to people and to God’s earth.

The Republican Party wasn’t always as demonic as it is today. There used to be far more decent Republican politicians than there are today. In my own home state of Oregon we had Republicans like Governor Tom McCall and Senator Mark Hatfield who were reasonable men who advocated many reasonable policies. My adopted state of Washington had Governor Dan Evans, another decent man who was also a Republican politician. I didn’t agree with any of these men on all issues, but they rarely advocated policies as evil as those the Republican Party stands for today. None of them would be at home in today’s Republican Party.

What happened? How did the Republican Party become as demonic as it is today? I’m not sure I can answer that question fully, but I can point to when the change started. It started in 1980 with the election of Ronald Reagan as President. Some of Reagan’s policies actually weren’t as demonic as those advocated by the Republican Party today, but Reagan started the Party on the path of tax cuts for the wealthy and a reduction of governmental services for ordinary people and people in need. Reagan’s domestic motto could have been “Greed is good.” His foreign policy motto could have been “America first an an enormous military to keep it first.” Many Americans love Reagan because they say he made them proud to be Americans again. I am ashamed that we made him President of the United States. He was a mentally dull B actor with no real qualifications to be President, and he started the Republican Party down a road that has now led us to the American fascist Donald Trump.

The Republican Party has sold its soul to big money interests and benighted social conservatives who think Christianity is mostly about hating people who aren’t like them. It happily sacrifices the wellbeing of people in need to give money to enormously wealthy people who hardly need more money. It does that only because those people give money to Republican candidates. It nominated Trump for President, a man with no sense even of common decency, much less any higher moral standards. When Trump became President I wrote these words to the song My Country ‘Tis of Thee:

My country ‘tis of thee,

Dear land that used to be,

Of thee I sing.

Thou has betrayed thyself,

Sold out to fear and wealth,

Stored thy best values on the shelf,

Tears of sorrow sting.

That is what the demonic spirit of the Republican Party has produced. Pain at what has become of our country. Sorrow at the loss of our better values.

Wink insisted that fallen powers can be redeemed. As a Christian he could take no other position on the matter. I’m a Christian too, and I do believe in redemption and resurrection. Still, the demonic spirit of the Republican Party has become so strong among us that it is hard to feel anything but despair today. Can the Republican Party be redeemed? Can America be redeemed? I hope so, but hope is hard to cling to these days. There are a few signs of hope. Three courageous Republican Senators (Collins, Murkowski, and McCain) just stopped the Republican Party from depriving millions of Americans of health insurance. Trump’s approval ratings hover around 36% or so. It is appalling that over one third of Americans approve of him, but at least most Americans don’t. Maybe in the 2018 Congressional election and the 2020 Congressional and Presidential election our people will rise up, stand for what is right, and remove the Republicans from power. I hope that we will. I pray that we will, but the demonic power of the Republican Party is strong among us. And by the way, it’s not that the Democrats are perfect. Far from it. They have their demons too. Yet the problem with the Republicans is not about individual politicians. It is about a demonic spirit. Demonic spirits are exorcised (that’s a metaphor again) by discernment of the truth, starting with the reality of a demonic possession followed by a turning to what is right, what is true. I pray that the Republican Party will undertake that process of discernment and return to its better angels. Until is does, we must pray for redemption and consistently reject the Republican Party, its representatives, and its policies.

1For a shorter version of Wink’s work written for a more popular audience see his The Powers That Be, Theology for a New Millennium, Doubleday, New York, 1998.